Category: Holiday 2016

Our 25 days in Namibia and Botswana yielded a lot of good memories, some anxious moments and lots of laughs, amongst other things.
Below is a non-final list of things we got from being on holiday this year:

A lot of pictures (> 200GB!)

2 new tyres

1 tyre repair (costing only 30 pula!)

21 new beers/ciders added to my inventory

3 new countries visited

A PDF invoice in my email inbox from the rental company after the return of the car (WUT?!)

2802 air miles

7 new species of antilope seen (& photographed!)

2 new Facebook connections ( 🙂 )

All in all, quite a few novelties for us, and the biggest adventure we’ve embarked on so far. Awesome!

Today is the last leg of our journey home, the one where we get on a plane to Johannesburg and finally to Amsterdam. It also marks the last day in Namibia, and the last day of our trip to southern Africa. I’m really quite sad that it ends already, as we’ve had an absolute blast over here!

The owner of the game farm has decorated his house with some of the animals he farms, including a full size giraffe. Yes, that picture indeed features a mounted bust of a giraffe. 0_o

The trip to Windhoek airport was rather uneventful, and we fuelled it up without any issues near to the airport. The guys from the rental company didn’t even complain about the absolute state we left the car in: “It’s Namibia, it’ll get dirty over here!” was their response. Yay!

There only was one oddity on the flight to Johannesburg: the meals we were served actually differed from each other. We both had ‘meat’, but one was a pie with chicken, and the other was a beef pastrami sandwich. Being served two different meals which are supposed to be the same on a plane is really peculiar, and we were as baffled as the flight attendants! The flight back home (after a long wait in South Africa) was long and sleepless for me, and was in a plane from KLM Asia. 😉

With a full tank of diesel and 4 working tyres, we start the 530km long first leg towards Windhoek. It will take us from Maun (Botswana) to a lodge just outside of Buitepos (Namibia) and back from the lush green world to the arid dry land.

The lodge we are staying at is called Kalahari Bush Breaks, and they offer a 4×4 track on their land. Besides catering the tourists, it also is a working game farm, which means they have about 22 species of animals living on the farm which are bred for their meat and hide. The track is meant to provide the users a nice way to view the game, but it proved to be just a little too much for our Duster.

The ground clearance of the car is just too little for us to drive the track as we almost got stuck, after which we decided to turn around and drive back. We got to about half of the 22km track, and it turned out to be a good decision. Tim & Rosaline have a car with much more ground clearance, and they informed us that there was at least another point where we would have gotten ourselves in trouble. In the end, it is just not worth it. We started the drive together, as we were unsure what it would bring.

Our room overlooks a water hole which is lit by night, and we drank the last of their beers sitting on our porch while viewing the Water Buck, Kudu and Impala, while listening to a male Impala trying to impress the females by grunting and barking. Quite amusing yet rather scary as the noise that small animal makes is really low and loud. You wouldn’t guess that it was an Impala making that sound.

We are not woken up by the heavy breathing of an elephant this morning, but by the rather stark “hello” from our guide. This also meant that walking on the pathways was safe again, which is also nice.

We chose to do a boat tour this morning after our breakfast, and it turned out to be a great decision! With elephants munching on the grass around virtually every corner, and lots of other animals showing themselves or basking in the morning sun, it was a wonderful boat tour. Unfortunately, it was cut short as our flight back to Maun was at 11:50, so we arrived back at the lodge at 10. This left us plenty of time to have a really early lunch and grab all our stuff to get on the plane. The people at Moremi Crossing have been really nice to us, and the place itself is ultimately serene while the scenery is stunningly gorgeous. If you ever find yourself in the vicinity, please visit the Okavango Delta: preferably from a camp almost inside the National Park. It will not disappoint you!

Our pilot today was Mitch, and the flight back rather uneventful. Only a short 20 minutes later we were at the Arivals/Departures hall in Maun, and after a quick call to the place where our car is parked we got picked up and brought back to the Duster.

We spent the rest of the day relaxing and fixing our front tyre as it has a slow puncture. This was skilfully mended by a guy from Tyre World for the hefty sum of 30 pula, which is about €2,75. Yeah!

Tomorrow, we’ll start our two legged journey to Windhoek with a long drive back to Namibia. With fixed tyres and enough air in them, we feel confident everything will go swimmingly. 😉

Today is our full day in the safari camp, which means we get fed and entertained at predetermined times. Our wake up call is at 06:30, and we have breakfast at 07:00. After this we embark on our morning activity, which in our case is getting ferried to the island where we will walk the bush by mokoro. Right before breakfast though, we wandered out on the walkway in front of our safari tent, and suddenly found ourselves the animal that kept us awake at night: a massive elephant. It was a regular in the camp, but we had to take caution around it as it still is a very big and potentially dangerous animal. We stood a while watching the guy, but decided to let him have his breakfast too.

The guide was tracking lions through their spoor, but we were unable to catch up with them. As they are lions, this also meant that most animals got scared off by them, so the walk was really beautiful and peaceful, but we haven’t seen many animals. The ride on the mokoro is especially zen, as it is traditionally a hollowed out tree trunk pushed by a guy standing in the back with a push pole, nowadays the boats are fiberglass but the propulsion soupy stem is the same. Without making any sounds you glide over the shallow waters through the hippo grass. A very nice way to start your day!

After the walk, we have an early lunch at 11:30, after which the siesta commences. We spent it basking in the sun and generally doing nothing instil the next (light) meal. This is at 15:30, when the high tea is served in anticipation of the afternoon activity.

For us it was another boat ride, on which we have seen a lot of animals! Elephants, hippos, Tsessebe, Red Lechwe, and many others. There was one downside to this whole ordeal though: the unseasonal presence of mosquitos. And a lot of them. They usually are only there around December, but they happen to be in the delta right now. Nobody knew why, and everybody thought is was odd, but we are kind of stuck with them. And yes, they do bite you!

Staying in Maun is just the stepping stone for us, the first step towards staying at a private camp right next to the National Park. We have booked a couple of nights at Moremi Crossing, and today is the day we fly out to the camp.

First order of business: parking the car at the headquarters of the company owning the camp. It is called Under One Botswana Sky, and is situated a short distance from Maun International Airport. We parked the car, with plenty of time to spare for our 10:10 flight. The shuttle to the airport proved to be the car of the manager, and we were soon after this in the capable hands of a porter who was going to get our luggage into the right plane. For us, this was a storable bag of 10kg, and my backpack containing all our photo gear. Just shy of 20kg, we were pretty much maxed out on our 10kg per person maximum.

Checking in was a breeze, we were actually given our hand written ticket by the porter without even mentioning our names or showing our passports, and the security check was equally swift. We told the porter which bags contained liquids or knives, and they were immediately taken away and transported in the baggage compartment of the plane (under the belly). Our own bags had to go through a security scanner, we passed through a metal detector and we were in the holding area. A short while later, we were directed into a car, which lead us to our 4 seat plane, with a total of 5 passengers. Kirsten was the lucky one to sit in the seat of the co-pilot, I got the seat on the last row. The flight was short, bumpy and it passes over a fantastic scenery.

The camp has a rigid schedule: wake up call at 06:30 in the morning, breakfast at 7, and the morning activity starts at 07:30. It returns at 11, after which lunch is served at 11:30. This is where we arrived at the camp. After lunch, the siesta commences and lasts until 15:00 when a high tea is served. The evening activity starts at 16:00, and you come back at 18:00. You are then escorted to your safari tent, and are picked up by the guide at 19:15 for pre dinner drinks. At 19:30 dinner is served and a guide escorts you back to your tent. As elephants roam free in this camp, walking after dark alone is prohibited and a guide must accompany you at all times. The next day the exact same schedule is kept, and everything starts over.

Wow, what a night was that. Cold, a little damp, completely silent and we were literally star struck by the vast twinkling expanse over our sleeping bag. The moon showed up late in the night, which gave us enough time to gaze at the Milky Way and the southern stars and constellations.

Waking up was a little tough though, as there is no shower and the sleeping bag is a much more comfortable temperature than the outside. The way back on the quad bikes was as awesome as the way in, but before we knew it we were back at Planet Baobab and our slowly leaking left front tire. Luckily, our new found friends and accidental travelling companions Tim & Rosaline have a compressor and pressure gauge, so that issue was quickly and temporarily resolved. Mending the tire will have to wait for a large town, and that just so happens to be where we are headed next.

Maun is the destination, and a mere 240km and half a diesel tank away. The fuel gauge on our Duster has a very spotty performance, and we’ve come to distrust whatever it tells us. It has been more empty than reported, but also more full than reported. So, without knowing how much diesel was left, we went our merry way and hoped for the best. The unfortunate thing was that the nearest filling station was in Nata, 90 kilometers in the opposite direction of where we were heading. The other one was in Maun. We managed though, and had plenty of diesel left when we reached our destination.

We’ll fly to a camp on a private concession next to the Okavango Delta National Park from Maun, so we are looking forward to getting spoiled!

The Lodge has not been very helpful in providing information about the upcoming ‘activity’, but we were told that it would all change when the guide would fill in the gaps. So we waited for the scheduled time of this pre-Pan meeting, but had to check out in the morning.

So we did, and by 10 in the morning we were locked out of our rondavel, and all bags were packed and closed inside our trusty Duster. We didn’t know what to pack the night before, so we made our educated guesses (it’s probably cold in the desert at night, so we better pack extra warm clothes; there probably also is no lighting, so we have to grab a torch, and the like) and waited it out. Then the time came for our guide to introduce himself (Bakos) and say: bring warm clothes, closed shoes. That was it. He almost literally spoke those four words, and off we were.

First we embarked on a safari Jeep which took us (rough estimate!) 40 kilometers from the lodge to the edge of the Ntwetwe Salt Pan, after which our party of 6 had to share a total of 4 quad bikes. That meant that the two couples each had to share a quad, and that the two dudes travelling together had one each. Life just isn’t fair!

Driving the quad bikes on the salt pan is just plain awesome! Screaming through this completely featureless arid landscape with the wind blowing in your hair is insane fun, and we had a blast driving to the camp. This actually consisted of only a few things: folding chairs, a wood fire, one table, a pile of sleeping bags and an outhouse. All surrounded by the vast emptiness of the pan.

Our destination for today is a lodge nestled amongst Baobab trees, and it is located on a convenient spot to visit the adjacent salt pans like Nxai Pan and Ntwetwe Pan.

The journey today is about 400 km long and was mostly uneventful except for two moments, the first was when I got a ticket for speeding (76 where 60 was allowed!) and the second one was an accident site where a truck had run into an elephant and its young. Both elephants were dead, and the truck was badly damaged, all in all it was not a nice sight. Luckily, the police were on the scene, and the local villagers were butchering the large elephant to get its meat. That way at least something good comes out of the entire ordeal.

Along the route, we also encountered what might be the rest of the herd of Elephants, who were loitering on the side of the road, jumping the fence to get hold of the green stuff growing on the road side of the fence. Because, as we all know, the grass is always greener on the other side of the fence. After dinner, we also found a Lesser Bushbaby, or Lesser Galago! This nocturnal primate is known for its cute appearance and elusive behaviour, and we were lucky enough to spot it walking from te lodge’s restaurant to our rondavel. We have been looking for a Bush Baby for ages, and have finally seen one! Awesome!

We are going on a trip to a salt pan tomorrow, so we don’t have to drive ourselves. Looking forward to it!